This is the joint website of Women Against Rape and Black Women's Rape Action Project. Both organisations are based on self-help and provide support, legal information and advocacy. We campaign for justice and protection for all women and girls, including asylum seekers, who have suffered sexual, domestic and/or racist violence.

WAR was founded in 1976. It has won changes in the law, such as making rape in marriage a crime, set legal precedents and achieved compensation for many women. BWRAP was founded in 1991. It focuses on getting justice for women of colour, bringing out the particular discrimination they face. It has prevented the deportation of many rape survivors. Both organisations are multiracial.

In the Media

While Tony and Ian Blair focus on defeating terrorists, are domestic violence, rape and racist assault being forgotten?

By Lisa Longstaff and Cristel Amiss,
The Times , Tuesday 17 January 2006

SOON after the shooting of the Brazilian Jean-Charles de Menezes by anti-terrorist officers, Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, called for public debate on policing. Now Tony Blair has announced drastic, immediate measures against hooligans, truants and their parents. But the most common, violent and terrifying antisocial behaviour - rape, domestic violence, racist attacks - do not appear a priority for either Blair.

Correspondence between government Minister David Lammy and Black Women's Rape Action Project & Women Against Rape
published in The Guardian Letters page

Erosion of asylum rights
Monday July 12, 2004 , The Guardian, Letters
Rape survivors are vulnerable and find it difficult, often impossible, to speak about the violence they have suffered. The law acknowledges this, granting rape victims anonymity. Women who have been raped who seek asylum in Britain are even more vulnerable. Deeply traumatised, they face the additional and frightening hurdle of being interviewed by officials in totally unfamiliar surroundings and often through translation.Yet according to David Lammy, the minister for constitutional affairs, the government is not "persuaded that victims of rape or torture, however defined, should be regarded as being in a category of vulnerable people".

The Guardian article below came about as a result of Legal Action for Women’s National Gathering on Saturday 3 July 2004. Kamwaura Nygothi was one of a number of women who raised the racism they were suffering in the North East of England. As a result of the article we have received many sympathetic responses, including several from Middlesborough. People said how shocked and disgusted they are at the racism and some offered practical support and help with housing, food and donations. Some of the letters and articles can be seen below.

Every moment for me is fear
As an asylum seeker, I discovered what racism really means when I was 'dispersed' to Middlesbrough
Kamwaura Nygothi, The Guardian, Comment, Thursday July 8, 2004

I am an asylum seeker and I am black. I believe that in Middlesbrough, where the Home Office has placed me, I am not safe.